When we launched the 75 Years of Stories series in February 2021 about 75 years of encounters at the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux, we had no idea what an adventure we had embarked on!

The idea came from Yara Zgheib, a Lebanese novelist living in the US. She introduced the series by describing how she came to Caux in 2010, as ‘a shipwreck of a girl’ and for the first time in her life found quiet. ‘This place taught me to breathe, to see, others and myself,’ she wrote. ‘By the time I left, I felt so light I could have flown to Montreux.’

My story is not special, or mine. It belongs to this conference centre.

Caux’s story, she concluded, ‘contains hundreds of thousands of train rides, walks, talks, teas, conversations, and quiet moments of giant transformation’.

Over the last year we have shared 75 of them. Now in our final post, we’ve asked the team who took up her challenge to share their reflections, memories and what motivated them to participate in the series.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Eliane Stallybrass, Switzerland

I was enthusiastic when I heard about the idea of producing one story for each of the 75 years that Caux has existed as an Initiatives of Change conference centre.

Then we started the work of finding the right stories and I even had to write a few myself, which was sometimes hard going! Recalling my memories of all these people, and of what they had brought to my life, was often moving.

Now I find I do not know some of those featuring in the more recent stories. Such is life. Like the conference centre, I am also 75.

Andrew Stallybrass, Switzerland/UK

More than 50 years of my adult life has been largely centred around the Caux conference centre. Eliane and I now live in the village in our active retirement. I have a passion for the history of the village and the centre, and give guided tours of both, trying to bring to life some of the amazing stories wrapped up in this perch looking out over Lake Geneva.

I’ve had the immense privilege of knowing so many of the people whose stories we’ve told. So many good friends! As so often in life, you start by thinking that you may lend a hand, and find that you’ve given an arm and a leg as well. But it’s been fun and great teamwork.

Ulrike Ott Chanu, France/Germany

When we started preparing the 75th anniversary celebrations I realized that 2021 was also my own IofC anniversary. I first came to Caux 35 years ago, in 1986. These 35 years have been an amazing journey with new skills learned, fascinating encounters, many friends from all over the world – and a place which feels like home, whenever I go there.

Working on the series was like diving back into my early years in Caux. It was fascinating to discover new facets of people I had met there but didn't know that much about. Working with our international team of writers and proofreaders wasn't only a lot of fun, but also a reflection of that core value which is so typical of Caux: bringing people together, no matter who they are and where they come from!

Michael Smith, UK

I first went to Caux 55 years ago and have been there most years since. A particular year changed the course of my life. In 1967 Rajmohan Gandhi, a journalist and author from India, brought a troop of young Asians to Caux to perform their colourful stage production, India Arise. He appealed for young Europeans to join his team in India in a spirit of service.

I went in 1971 and stayed for three years, working on the production of his newsweekly paper Himmat (courage). This encouraged me in my calling to be a writer. I have lost count of the number of times I have visited India since then.

Returning to Caux over the years, I have met people in business and industry who run their companies with honesty and integrity, serving all stakeholders. I have written their stories in four books and in national newspapers. www.michaelsmith.iofc.org

Monica Mittag, Switzerland/Germany

It was not easy to decide what to write about Caux and me, because my life has been so closely linked with Caux. For five years, I lived there and went to school in Montreux.

One summer, as a young teenager, I was helping in the kitchen. It was the first time I had used dry, instead of fresh, yeast. Because of a wrong calculation, I ended up with eight times more yeast in my dough than the recipe asked for. Another girl and I filled the cake tins as fast as we could, racing to stop the dough pouring over the top of the tub it had been mixed in. Luckily three other desserts had already been made.

Over the years, whenever I have come to Caux, it has been a great privilege to meet old friends. For me, friendships, like my marriage vows, are ‘until death do us part’.

Folker Mittag, Germany

During the business conferences organized by Heinrich Karrer, one of the best team-building exercises was operating the big dishwashing machine. Two people fed it with dirty dishes at one end and the rest of the team emptied at the other.

For several years, I was a member of the same team as Frits Philips, CEO of Philips Electronics. As we worked together, we developed a personal friendship. I learnt how he had been treated by the German occupying forces during the second world war, and told him about growing up in East Germany and how I left it.

One year, Frits asked me to drive a young Japanese to Eindhoven and to stay in his home for a few days. He needed a trustworthy interpreter because he was preparing for a high-ranking Japanese delegation. The next morning the young Japanese and I set off from Caux. That relationship also is still alive.

Mary Lean, UK

Among 60 years of memories of Caux, one stands out.

7.15 am. A small, diverse group gathers in the bay window of the meeting hall, to share the silence before the hubbub of the day. Today it’s my turn to offer a reflection. Picking my words carefully, I share my experience of God’s unconditional love. Then we are silent.

The sound of a reed pipe floats up from the terrace where a group of indigenous people from different countries are also welcoming the new day. The birds fly to and fro between the trees and balconies, as we look across the lake to the mountains.

I close the session with a prayer. One of the Muslims gets up and leaves the group. Have I offended him in some way?

Then I realize that, just behind our semicircle of chairs, he is prostrating himself. ‘I prayed in my own way,’ he explains later, and gives me a quotation from his tradition which speaks of God’s love.

John Bond, UK/Australia

I believe in the future of Caux. These 75 stories tell of people who found the faith and hope and courage to be the change they wanted to see (like my parents' story), often with creative outcomes in their communities, sometimes even affecting whole nations.

One outcome was the strengthening of democracy, especially in Europe. Thirty years ago IofC launched Foundations for Freedom, a programme which focused on the moral and spiritual qualities in citizens needed for democracy to thrive. Thousands of young people from Eastern and Central Europe, newly freed from dictatorial rule, took part.

Now democracy is threatened in much of Western Europe, and we need a new focus on those qualities. This has always been the role of Caux, and I want to help this to continue.

Working with our international team was a reflection of that core value which is so typical of Caux: bringing people together, no matter who they are and where they come from!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

We are grateful to everyone who allowed us to share their experiences and to all who wrote, researched, commented, and contributed photographs.

Thank you to Yara Zgheib for her inspiration and to Franz Vock for his support.

Thanks to the hard work of translaters and proofreaders Maya Fiaux, Jean Fiaux, Claire Fiaux-Martin, Teresa Healey, Tatjana Horbenko-Enomoto and Sebastian Hasse, the stories are now appearing in French and German.

And we could not have done it without the For a New World website, a treasure trove of source material, images and videos.

DISCOVER ALL 75 STORIES

As our series of 75 stories for 75 years of the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux draws to an end, the President of Initiatives of Change Switzerland, Christine Beerli, and its two Co-Director Generals, Stephanie Buri and Nick Foster, share their perspectives.

 Christine Beerli: Timeless challenge

‘Building bridges over the world’s divides’ – this timeless challenge is the programme of Initiatives of Change Switzerland. All the moving personal stories that we have published during our anniversary year bear witness to people who reached out to each other in difficult situations and built bridges.

Bridgebuilders are needed everywhere!

In our lives today, the pandemic has forced us to communicate mostly by digital means and our nerves are often on edge. Listening, trying to understand and creating connections are of the greatest importance. IofC will not run out of work in the next 75 years – bridgebuilders are needed everywhere!

Nick Foster: Work together

My first real encounter with Initiatives of Change (IofC) was in London in 1992, through a weekly gathering of young people, called Making Britain a Home. We discussed what was happening in our lives, shared food and quiet, and discovered what did, and sometimes didn’t, make Britain a home.

The group was incredibly diverse and our discussions were life-changing and perspective-altering. I began to understand how privileged my experience of life was. The systemic prejudice others in the group met every day had played little part in my understanding of my country. 

I went on to discover more of the world, and myself, through taking part with Erik and Sheila Andren in the Foundations for Freedom programme which was just starting in post-perestroika Europe and Russia. I grew more through these experiences and the resulting friendships than through all the formal education I had received. I felt a sense of belonging I hadn’t experienced before: even when I met new people in the IofC network it was like pulling on a familiar and comforting piece of clothing.

I am convinced that building trust across the world’s divides is the only way in which a viable future is possible.

In 2012, I started working with IofC Switzerland. I am convinced that building trust across the world’s divides, connected to individuals’ sense of purpose for their lives, is the only way in which a viable future is possible. The pandemic has shown us that that the written word, digital communication and the bubbles that form through social media all too readily breed mistrust and poor social and mental health.

I hope that in 2022 and beyond we can throw open the doors of Caux again, for deep exchange and personal transformation to take place. We really need each other – and our planet needs us to work together.

Stephanie Buri: The next chapter

75 years of stories, 75 years of encounters, 75 years of conferences, addressing the key issues of their times and bringing together people from all corners of the earth and all walks of life. Seventy-five years of rich, sometimes life-changing, interactions. 

During this anniversary year we have told the stories of people whose lives were touched by Caux, one for each year. They include far-reaching encounters, such as those between French and Germans after World War II or between Somalis of warring communities in 2005; heart-stopping moments, such as in 1981, when Agnes Hofmeyr spoke from the stage with a man who had sanctioned her father’s murder; and stories from the corridors, offices and kitchens  of the many volunteers who have made the conferences possible.  

It is now up to all of us to write the next chapter of Caux and of its encounters.

There’s new love, a wedding and a marriage reborn. There’s the moments when new initiatives took flight – Hope in the Cities, addressing race, poverty and alienation in American cities; Creators of Peace, empowering women as agents of change; and the Caux Round Table, bringing together industrialists from Japan, the US and Europe. Young, old and middle-aged describe how an experience or encounter at Caux have changed the course of their lives.

It is now up to all of us to write the next chapter of Caux and of its encounters, which in the last two years have mostly been online. People have brought Caux home, and there is a real thirst for meeting again in new and sustainable ways. I look forward to writing this next chapter with you.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

This story is the last in our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through our conference centre at Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021.

If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo top: Cindy Bühler
• All other photos: Initiatives of Change Switzerland

In 2020, the Caux Forum went online in response to the pandemic. Its organizers found that this made Caux accessible to people all over the world who could not have taken part in normal circumstances. One of these was 91-year-old Aad Burger from the Netherlands. He writes:

I went to Caux almost every summer between 1946 and 2010. Then, aged 82, I realized that the travel and the programme were becoming too much for me in my wheelchair. So when I read that the Caux conferences were going to take place online, I saw it as a great opportunity. Because of my deafness I couldn’t understand everything, but it was better than I expected.

In 1946, when I was 17, I was invited to help prepare the Caux Palace for its first Initiatives of Change (then Moral Re-Armament/MRA) conferences. My father worked for the Dutch Railways so I was able to get my train ticket and visas to leave the Netherlands and to enter Switzerland. We were not allowed to take money out of the Netherlands, so the Swiss MRA Foundation paid all my expenses.

While I was at Caux, I decided to give my life to God and to work with Moral Re-Armament to build a new world. I apologized to my father for cheating him. Sometimes I asked for an advance on my monthly pocket money, to be deducted the next month. If he forgot and paid me the full amount, I didn’t remind him.

I apologized to my father for cheating him.

I paid him back with money I had earned by growing tobacco on a small piece of land belonging to the family. I should have been growing vegetables, which we needed during the ‘hunger winter’ of 1944-1945. I apologized for that too!

After university and military service, I began to work fulltime with Moral Re-Armament. In 1952 I went with an international team to Africa, and stayed on in Ghana and Nigeria after they went home. Two years later I was travelling to Onitsha in Nigeria with a colleague, when I became more and more ill. The doctors we met did not know what was wrong.

One night I dreamt that I might be paralyzed for life. I prayed that this wouldn’t happen, but also decided that if it did, I would accept it and that I would continue to seek God’s guidance for my life.

I prayed that this wouldn’t happen, but also decided that if it did, I would accept it.

The next day, at a small hospital in Enugu, I was diagnosed with polio. I told the doctor that I felt God had warned me. ‘This will help you recover as much as possible,’ he said.

After three months immobile in bed, I had recovered a bit, but my legs remained partly paralyzed. I was flown home to Amsterdam.

Back in the Netherlands, I continued to work with Moral Re-Armament, mostly with workers in the port of Rotterdam. In 1968 I married Josienne De Loor. During this time I joined the Labour Party. I became its chair in Utrecht and served as a member of the city council from 1977 to 1998, with two interruptions.

Ever since my first time in Caux, I have started every day with quiet reflection.

Ever since my first time in Caux, I have started every day with quiet reflection, seeking God’s inspiration and direction. This has helped me to put into practice what I learned at Caux.

When the pandemic began, it reminded me of being struck by the polio virus. Completely unexpectedly, at the age of 26, I found myself paralyzed. I survived but with increasing dependence on a wheelchair. Was I going to die now, in my 90s, because of another unexpected virus? Of course, I hoped it would not hit me. But if one of my family was going to be hit, I hoped it would be me rather than my son or daughter, their partners or my four granddaughters.

What is my advice to young people today? Just as we did after World War II, let them take up the challenge to build a new world and experience the changes in their lives that will equip them for this.

What is my advice to young people today? Let them take up the challenge to build a new world.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

During World War II, the Caux Palace (later the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Switerland), provided a refuge for Jews fleeing the Shoah. Over the years, some of them – or their descendants – have returned to Caux, often to be welcomed by Andrew Stallybrass. He writes:

At the Caux Forum in 2019, Marc Isserles, a lawyer from Geneva, presented a moving one-man show which described a poignant chapter of the Caux Palace’s history.

In the summer of 1944, four trains a day, seven days a week, left Budapest, each carrying around 3,000 Jews to Auschwitz, crammed in cattle trucks. The Nazis’ aim was to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Hungary, together with thousands from other European countries who had found a fragile refuge there.

In late June 1944, however, one train left for safety. It carried 1,600 passengers, a Noah’s Ark, with representatives of all the different strands of Jewish life, Rabbis, Orthodox and Liberal, Zionists, Marxists.

A courageous young lawyer from Transylvania, Rudolf Reszö Israël Kastner, negotiated directly with Eichmann, and put his wife and father-in-law on the train to convince others that it was heading for life, not death.

The train was meant to go to Palestine or a neutral country. But it went first to Bergen-Belsen – Eichmann wanted to extract yet more money from its sponsors. Finally, in December 1944, its passengers arrived in Caux. The Orthodox Jews were housed in the Grand Hotel, with a kosher kitchen, and the others in the Caux Palace. The Swiss Army looked after them.

Kastner was reunited with his family in Caux, but his story has a tragic end. In 1947, he emigrated to Israel. There he was accused of being a corrupt traitor to the Jewish cause, and, in 1957, he was assassinated by an extremist.

Marc Isserles’ maternal grandparents arrived in Caux in 1944, as part of the Kastner train group. In his one-man show, We must save the children, he sang, danced and told stories, accompanied by two Klezmer musicians, Michel Borzykoswki and Sylvie Bossi. The show, which lasted little over an hour, was a moving celebration of ‘humanitude’, a subtle blend of his personal story, the quasi-miraculous story of his family, and some broader reflections on identity and our shared humanity.

As the last of the survivors and direct witnesses die, Marc Isserles has found a powerful way to pass the stories of the Shoah on to future generations. He has given performances in Geneva schools and plans are under way for more in Caux and for local schools.

Over the years, quite a number of those on the train, or their children and  grandchildren, have found their way to back to Caux. One who came back several times wrote in the guest book, ‘Caux was the first time in my life that I could be a child.’

I have twice shown elderly men where they were born: their mothers were pregnant when they arrived in Caux and gave birth in the Villa Maria, across the road from the Caux Palace.

In 1997, a tree was planted on the terrace of the Caux-Palace during an ‘hour of remembrance’ and in 1999 a plaque was installed underneath it. The text on the plaque reads: ‘In remembrance of the Jewish refugees who stayed here, and of those who were not admitted to Switzerland during World War II. We shall not forget.’ One of the youngest of those turned away was a girl of five who was gassed in Auschwitz.

The Mayor of Montreux, Pierre Salvi, spoke at the event in 1999. In early 1945, Montreux gave shelter to 4,000 wounded, deported and refugees, including those in Caux. He spoke of the Caux conferences’ work to heal the wound of past – ‘allowing us to envisage a more peaceful future of tolerance, forgiveness, of amity between peoples’.

When you see this, it’s not just a list. Behind the names, there are faces, families, hopes and despair. Human beings.

- Marc Isserles -

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Shoshana Faire: Embracing the 'too painful'

I first travelled to Caux from Australia in 2010, expecting to discover and understand the peacebuilding work of Initiatives of Change. What I didn’t expect was to discover part of my own family history.

I found that my grandparents had been housed at Caux during the war as refugees from the horror of the Holocaust.

I had known that they escaped by paying to get on a train out of Budapest, which instead of taking them to Spain, so they could go to Palestine, had taken them to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp for five months and then finally to freedom in Switzerland. I hadn’t known that they had ended up in Caux.

Seeing their names on the list of the refugees housed at Caux enabled me to explore the Kastner train history and to appreciate their experience more deeply. It means a lot to me that this has been memorialized with a plaque and a tree in the garden at Caux.

Marc’s lively and moving performance has enabled me to embrace this part of my identity rather than keeping it hidden in an internal box marked ‘too painful’. And to own and recognize my own inherited trauma and grief.

I continue to be an active peacebuilder with a greatly expanded toolkit and experience.

Shoshana Faire is passionate about peace and what it takes to create peace and has delivered over 1,250 workshops on a range of skills that contribute to better relationships, teams and meetings. She has been actively involved in Initiatives of Change (IofC) since 2010 and is currently an International Coordinator for Creators of Peace.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Watch the replay of Marc Isserles' one-man-show (2019

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photos of family members: Shoshana Faire
• Photo train: Yad Vashem
• All other photos and video: Initiatives of Change